Why you should put pop behind you

Its lyrics are banal, its riffs repetitive, its emotions stunted. Classical offers so much more. Act your age, says David Mills

Suits you, sir: classical music is more David Mills’s style today than rock (Dwayne Senior )

I
wouldn’t want to be too prescriptive, but there is an age — 25? 30? — at
which you should stop listening to pop music, an age at which you should
grow up, put ­jingly-jangly guitars and thudding beats behind you, and move
on. Trade up to the ­serious stuff. Ditch Radiohead, catch on to Beethoven.
Cast off Coldplay, give Janacek a whirl. Forget Morrissey, wallow in Mahler.

As a teenager, I was deeply immersed in rock music. The late 1970s/early 1980s
seemed a vibrant time, and when most of my contemporaries were ­anxious to
define themselves narrowly as punks, hard-rock fans, mods, soul boys, my
tastes were wide-ranging: I was crazy about the Clash, the Sex Pistols,
Buzzcocks, the Stranglers, Wire, Gang of Four and the Jam, then Joy
Division, the Psychedelic Furs and New Order; I loved Pink Floyd and Led
Zeppelin. I adored Jimi Hendrix, Johnny Winter and the